For the first time in its history, the BJP has initiated something close to a public discussion — with prominent party figures adopting opposing stances — on whether the party should give election tickets to Muslims or not. The trend in the BJP has been not to. This time around too, in Uttar Pradesh (and other states), a state where the Muslim population is nearly as high as 20 per cent, the saffron party has chosen not to field any Muslims. What is surprising is that the debate has started in the middle of a tight election, whose results are posited to have a long-term effect. The probable meaning of this is that if the results are not positive, the party leadership will have to bear the cross — in this case president Amit Shah, and by implication Prime Minister Narendra Modi, without whose say-so Mr Shah is deemed incapable of taking a single step.
Union ministers Rajnath Singh, Uma Bharti and Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi (minister of state for minority affairs) have articulated the view that it might have been “better” if Muslims had been taken along. A sharp counter came from Vinay Katiyar, a significant Hindutva voice, that Muslims don’t vote for the BJP, so why bother? It’s true that traditionally Muslims in India haven’t voted for the BJP. This is because the BJP, and the Jan Sangh earlier, were perceived as inimical to religious minorities (Muslims and Christians), with their ideological roots in the Hindu-supremacist RSS. Their policies and slogans spelt that out clearly enough.
This was seen as par for the course, and few bothered to question it. However, with the BJP taking national power on its own strength, the issue is whether such a line is sustainable. Can such a party ignore or overlook sectional interests, specially in the economic realm, of an important section of India, and still call itself nationalist? Are long-held BJP positions, such as all are equal in their eyes and there should be no majority or minority community, at all sustainable? With the panoply of theory constructs of this nature, can the saffron party win elections where religious minorities are a significant number, such as UP? The last Lok Sabha election was evidently a flash in the pan, owing to very specific circumstances. The PM evidently realises this too. Hence, his Monday speech in Mau in which he raised the possibility of a hung Assembly in UP, instead of boldly asserting that the BJP would form the government, as is his wont. In the last Lok Sabha polls, the BJP won 45 per cent of the vote. As that seems completely unrealistic now, some BJP voices are being raised about the Muslim question.
